Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles (2 page)

‘Gloucester was a juicy apple into which the pamphleteers sink their greedy teeth. Tales of courage and sacrifice are their meat and drink, and they have fed off Massie’s unlikely heroism like sows at a trough. But Gloucester did not alter the war. It was a worthless town before the siege and is a worthless town now the soldiers have left. One heavy defeat. One daring attack by Rupert or Maurice or Newcastle and this great rebellion will be but a memory. The Parliament will agree to almost anything if it’ll bring the Scots into the fray.’

‘Like a game of chess,’ Fassett said. He saw the hairless brow crease in surprise. ‘I know such things,’ he muttered.

The hood quivered as its wearer nodded. ‘I forget you have a modicum of education. To use your analogy, the pieces are at stalemate.’

‘King Pym would make an audacious move.’

The hood turned fully, the impossibly pale face within the sepulchral depths staring out like a creature from Fassett’s childhood nightmares. ‘King Pym would change the rules.’

Fassett screwed up his scarred face. ‘This League will take such an effect? It’ll change the game?’

‘The Solemn League and Covenant is an agreement between the English and the Scots, to further the cause of Presbyterianism and religious reform.’ He lifted an arm, a brittle hand appearing from the voluminous sleeve, and counted each point on the end of a spindly finger. ‘A guarantee by both parties to preserve Parliament and the person of the King. The suppression of religious and political trouble-makers, the preservation of the union of the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland. And a pledge of mutual support and commitment to the League.’ He turned back to stare at Vane, who was now engaged in private conversation with several of his peers. ‘That last being the reason we’re here, Mister Fassett. The Scots will give us their army, and together we will crush the malignants ’twixt our twin fists.’

‘Still a big risk for them,’ Fassett said, unconvinced. ‘What if they get beat? Lose their army for the sake of an English brabble?’

‘We will pay for it. The Parliament undertakes to fund the entire cost of this Scots expedition.’

‘Jesu, how much?’

‘Mind your tongue.’

‘How much?’ Fassett persisted.

Now the taller man turned back to him. He pulled back the hood just a touch, enough for Fassett to see the taut skin, pulled so tight it might have been the surface of a drum. The man had no hair on his face. No stubble, no eyebrows or lashes. His lips were purple, thin as a reeds, and just as tight as the rest of his features, so that it seemed as though it must be impossible for the man to smile or frown. But those eyes. They were so blue against such a pallid setting, like sapphires on a linen pillow. They seemed to bore into Fassett’s very mind as the narrow lips moved. ‘One hundred thousand pounds.’

Sterne Fassett whistled softly, drawing a few vexed glares from the nearest men who were now beginning to file out of the church. ‘How will—?’

‘Loans.’

Fassett laughed openly this time. ‘Voluntary?’

The pale face dipped. ‘To begin with. When that achieves nothing, they will take them by force, have no doubt. Either way, they’ll find the money. They have to if they’re to win the war. And there are always other avenues down which they may stroll.’

‘Oh?’

‘Have you not wondered why we are here, Mister Fassett? Why I have requested your dubious skills once more?’

Sterne Fassett had assumed a man – perhaps an important man – would need to be found dead in some filthy gutter or floating in the Thames. But the glint in the blue eyes told him there was more.

Just then a black-suited dignitary carrying a tall, buckled hat in the crook of his arm left Sir Henry Vane’s side and marched a little way down the nave. When he was parallel to their pillar, he turned on his heels and lifted a hand in summons. ‘Mister Tainton?’ he called. ‘Roger Tainton?’

The hooded man pushed the cowl back to his shoulders. Most of the assembly had dispersed by now, but those left behind could not suppress gasps that seemed unnaturally loud in the cavernous interior. Fassett did not blame them, for his master was truly something to behold. The abnormally taut skin did not stop at his face, but covered his entire skull. No hair sprouted from his pate, and his ears were shrivelled buds, curled in on themselves like leaves left out in a searing sun.

Tainton bowed slowly, as though the movement was achieved with some effort. ‘Sir.’

The man indicated the head of the nave where Vane stood. ‘Will you come this way?’

‘Gladly, sir.’ With that, Tainton left the pillar, striding between two of the pews and out on to the wider path behind the suited man. He wore bright spurs on his boots, and their rhythmic jangle echoed loudly as he moved. He paused only to look back at Fassett. ‘See to your men. I want them ready to travel immediately.’

‘Where do we go?’ Sterne Fassett called in his wake.

‘That is what I am about to discover,’ Tainton replied. ‘But we are on a hunt, Mister Fassett.’

‘A hunt? For what?’

Tainton’s arm whipped out and he flicked something metallic towards Fassett. As it spun, it winked in the light that streamed in from the high windows. He plucked it from the air with one hand, abruptly snuffing it out, and looked down as he uncurled his fingers. It was a coin.

‘For things that glitter, Mister Fassett,’ Roger Tainton called as he walked away. ‘Things that glitter.’

CHAPTER 1

Atlantic Ocean, 30 September 1643

The ocean broiled. It was deep night and the sky was blanketed in angry clouds that glowered when lightning forked in their midst.

Rain lashed the
Kestrel
, pulsing on the wind in diagonal sheets to whip viciously through her rigging and soak her deck. She was a lone island in the wild abyss, struggling, riding one impossibly huge swell after another, dipping and bucking like a raw colt, prow poised before sky and sea in turn.

The
Kestrel
was a fluyt, built by the Dutch and bought by the English, a curved beast of Baltic pine and sail, beautifully crafted and manned by some of the best seamen to navigate England’s treacherous coastline. But now she was battered and bruised, tossed by the elements, her trio of square-rigged masts like winter trees, all shrouds bound tight against the howling wind. She was a trading vessel by design, fashioned with a wide hull that swept inwards up to a narrow deck. A ship to carry much cargo and few crew. But this night, aside from the score of grizzled seamen, the fluyt carried a compliment of thirty-six for this most special voyage, though the storm had chased most below decks to wallow in self-pity and vomit. The slop buckets, filled by those too unwell to move, had long since tipped, dashing slurry over the timbers as they rolled back and forth in a stinking parody of the water outside.

A stab of lightning turned the sky white as the lone figure struggled up the ladder and on to the deck. He was wrapped in a heavy cloak, one hand clutched at his breast to hold the greasy layers fast against the wind, the other gripping the voluminous hood tight about his skull, his head tilted down to let the rain drip from its edge. He took a broad stance as he reached the deck, lest the gale lift him clean off his feet, and leaned into the gusts, dipping his shoulder as he pressed forwards. Up ahead he saw the smudges of folk huddled at the bow and he went to join them. He was a soldier, and he felt his scabbard bounce against his thigh as though it taunted him. His weapons and skill were of no use to him here.

He passed two weathered seamen clinging to ropes as the rain lashed down. They were strong men, broad at the shoulder and well used to the cruel fury of the ocean, and yet their faces betrayed something disquieting. He paused, grabbed a loop of rope to keep himself steady, and stared at them. They were frightened and the knowledge made his guts twist. The soldier reached the steersman who wrestled manfully with a whipstaff that he could not hope to control. The tiller to which it was attached would be bucking with the waves, bending only to the will of the water beneath. The man squinted into his face, then looked hurriedly away; the soldier was accustomed to the re­action. His was a face of harsh lines and sharp edges, scored and scoured and beaten like the cliffs the
Kestrel
had left behind. It was long and narrow, beaten dark by the sun and given a feral aspect by the one grey eye that gleamed in the side of the face that might still be called handsome. The left side had gone. All that remained of eye and brow and cheek was a tattered mess of scar tissue, a tangle of pink and white, the legacy of some ancient horror. His nose was canted slightly to one side, swollen and crimson, recently broken, the mark of a man whose life was defined by violence. His hood was pulled up tight to shield him from the storm, but some of his long hair had broken free of the cowl, flapping about his temples like a headdress of raven fea­thers. He gathered the soaking strands with gloved fingers and brushed them back behind his ears.

‘Where is the captain?’ he called above the howl of the night.

The steersman nodded towards the ship’s prow and the soldier moved carefully on. Somewhere nearby a single lantern clanged against its brace. Out beyond the floating fortress’s pine breastwork he could see splashes of frothy white where the swirling torrent was kicked up and shredded by insidious rocks. He was not a religious man, but he prayed all the same.

The soldier found the ship’s captain at the foremost point of the curved vessel, where plank and mast and rigging gave way to simple, sheer, endless darkness. Like his one-eyed passenger, he was swathed in a heavy oiled cloak with only his wrinkled face exposed to the elements.

‘The Irishers call them banshees,’ the ship’s master shouted up at his passenger as he clung to a lanyard. He nodded out to sea. ‘That unholy chorus.’

The soldier shrugged. ‘It’s the wind, Captain Jones.’

Jones looked up past the masts and rigging and the tightly lashed bundles of gathered sail. ‘Ever heard a wind like this, Mister Stryker?’

The ship lurched suddenly to larboard, dipped into a valley between two gigantic waves, and bucked on the next swell so that the only thing the men could see was the pitch fastness of the sky. The vessel seemed to cry out like an injured whale, every timber groaning in dreadful unison.

Stryker gathered his cloak tighter. ‘The truth, Captain Jones. We will survive this?’

Jones grinned wolfishly. ‘Of course!’ He patted the slick rail. ‘My beauty’s built to tame the oceans!’

Stryker was not so sure. He had always hated the treacherous unpredictability of the sea. A patch of foam frothed and seethed wildly in the inky distance, betraying a hidden point where the water’s angry surface was torn like black cloth. ‘More rocks?’

‘Keep your nerve, Captain!’ Jones brayed in dark amusement. ‘It signals our success!’

‘Land?’

‘Land indeed, sir! St Martin’s. Did I not tell you to trust me?’

A sheet of stinging spray jetted up off the bow to dowse the two men, and they hunched low. Stryker slipped, only just managing to right himself. He swore into the wind. ‘I mean to make for St Mary’s.’

‘And I shall see that you reach it, Mister Stryker,’ Jones said confidently. ‘The Scillies are comprised of many islands.’ But when the ship groaned again, the mirth melted from his eyes. He cocked his head to the side like a hound sniffing the breeze.

Stryker felt his pulse quicken. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing, I am sure,’ Jones said, but his voice was barely audible.

‘I do not believe you.’

Jones swallowed thickly. ‘The timbers should not sound like that. Something is amiss, that is all.’

The
Kestrel
rose quickly, as if propelled by the fist of God Himself, and they were staring at the sky again. When it dropped the groan was deeper, like the grinding of cogs that had fallen out of step. The deck vibrated.

‘Jesu,’ Jones murmured. ‘Oh, Jesu.’

‘Captain?’

Jones’s eyes were suddenly wide, bright discs above the hedge of his beard. ‘Oh, Jesus, help us!’

The impact began as a series of small cracks, like the felling of a dozen trees, one after another, rising in volume and force, each shaking the timbers at their feet. Stryker grasped the rail and looked to Jones for an answer, but the skipper was already backing away, staggering and sliding rearwards across the slippery planks. His hands raked down his cheeks, tugging at his whiskers, as though he suddenly witnessed a horror too awful for his mind to consider. ‘We have been blown off course, sir!’ he blurted as Stryker began to pursue. ‘Rocks! My God, we are lost!’

When it came, the collision knocked both men off their feet. If the first cracks had been like falling trees, this was as though a building of stone had come crashing down in a single instant. Stryker sprawled on the watery deck, scrabbling for purchase as the vessel reeled. It screamed as the unseen assailant tore into its belly, the timbers splintering far below them, eviscerating the keel, exposing the
Kestrel
to a most terrible fate. As Stryker clambered back to his feet he could no longer see the ship’s captain, but through one of the hatches further along the deck came the shapes of men. They were bellowing, snarling oaths and warnings, beseeching God for mercy, because they all knew what was happening to their ship.